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More "Asperity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and his grandmother, taking the letter from Bertha, and placing it in his hand, accosted him with no little asperity of tone. ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... the sort of strangeness in her ideas which is often noticeable in characters that have developed late, in savages, who think much and speak little. Her peasant's wit had acquired a good deal of Parisian asperity from hearing the talk of workshops and mixing with workmen and workwomen. She, whose character had a marked resemblance to that of the Corsicans, worked upon without fruition by the instincts of a strong nature, would have liked to be the protectress of a weak man; but, as a result ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Blake that his uncle looked ill, which might account for his asperity, and he made ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... Helga, if you made so insulting a speech to Herr Hardy," said the Pastor, with some asperity, "that it should be withdrawn. To tell a man that he is a coward and has false pride is too galling, and when not a single ground for it exists the more so. You might thereby have tempted him to risk his life, to say ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... drawing-room. The wife, dressed with a certain haste and carelessness, was carrying in her arms her third child, yet unweaned, and she expected a fourth in the early autumn. Clara had matured, she had grown stronger; and despite the asperity of her pretty, pale face there was a charm in the free gestures and the large body of the young and prolific mother. Albert Benbow wore the rough, clay-dusted attire of the small earthenware manufacturer who is away from the works for half an hour. Both of ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... see Mr. Hegan personally," Montague answered, with just a trifle of asperity, "If you will kindly take in this card, it will ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... returned, not without a touch of asperity; "but you know as well as I do that you will have to deal with a Gloucester-built schooner before you are through with ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... to the culminating point. She thought the faithless damsel had come to announce her engagement, and demand sympathy and congratulations. So, with a view to arrest any aggressive gush, she said, with some asperity,—"I am glad you have come, for I wanted to tell you, Cecil, how bad it looked your walking off in that way with ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... Mrs. Bleak with distinct asperity, "is to become of me and the children if Mr. Bleak is elected to this ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... placing in its way of an impediment which shall prevent its further overflow. I think much depends upon the manner, the inflection, and the tone of voice in which the desire is expressed, and I am sorry to say that upon the occasion to which I refer, there was more of the asperity of profanity than the calmness of constructive suggestion in my father's manner. In any event I did not blame him, for here was I coming along, undeniably imminent, a tempest raging, and no doctor in sight, and consequently no telling when my venerable sire would have to go out ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... Rampson with asperity; then correcting himself quickly, and with a rather ghastly smile, "I say, you two did ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... had made me, much about the same time, obtain an introduction to Dr. Samuel Johnson and to John Wilkes, Esq. Two men more different could perhaps not be selected out of all mankind. They had even attacked one another with some asperity in their writings; yet I lived in habits of friendship with both. I could fully relish the excellence of each; for I have ever delighted in that intellectual chemistry which can separate good qualities from evil ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... aware of some subtle difference in the spirit of the home. As to Thomas so to his father a change had come. The old man was as silent as ever, indeed more so, but there was no asperity in his silence. His critical, captious manner was gone. His silence was that of a great sorrow, and of a great fear. While there was more cheerful conversation than ever at the table, there was through all a new ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... bade Tancred as usual good-night, his voice was different from its accustomed tones; he had replied to Tancred with asperity several times during the evening; and when he was separated from his companion, he felt relieved. All unconscious of these changes and symptoms was the heir ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... of the sort," corrected Miss Doc, with asperity, and, removing her bonnet, she sat down on a stool, Jim's overalls in hand and her bag in her lap. "John's mended regular, all but his hair, and if soap-suds and bear's-grease would patch his top he wouldn't ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... the worl'," said Mrs. Wagoner with a shade of asperity in her voice (or was it satisfaction?). Mrs. Wagoner's husband had been in a bombproof during the war, when Jim Upton (Jim's father) was with his company. He had managed to keep his teams from the ...
— "Run To Seed" - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... seeing it, the following year, imitated throughout Europe, and his Journal, at the same time, translated into various languages. But as most authors lay themselves open to an acute critic, the animadversions of SALLO were given with such asperity of criticism, and such malignity of wit, that this new journal excited loud murmurs, and the most heart-moving complaints. The learned had their plagiarisms detected, and the wit had his claims disputed. Sarasin called the gazettes of this ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... upon that account; for what other excuse can I contrive? It is enough that they can, without our instruction, compose the graces of their eyes to gaiety, severity, sweetness, and season a denial with asperity, suspense, or favour: they need not another to interpret what we speak for their service; with this knowledge, they command with a switch, and rule both the tutors and the schools. But if, nevertheless, it angers them to give place to us in anything whatever, and will, out of curiosity, have ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... kind," rejoined Martha, rather quickly, and with some degree of asperity; "and if you'll give her my grateful dooty, I'd like to leave as soon ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... be a forgery. The signing and witnessing were done in my presence," said my uncle. He rose from his chair, instinctively locked up his bureau; and, if such stern features could assume an aspect of still greater asperity, it was when the interrogator thus continued:—"You were, as you observe, Mr S——, an eye-witness to the due subscription of this deed. If I am to clear myself from the imputation of unjustifiable curiosity, I must beg leave to examine yourself ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Duke of Newcastle, he found obdurate in another direction, speaking with great asperity against Lord Derby and his party; he would make no vows as to junction, not even that he would not join Disraeli; but he thought this government must be opposed and overthrown; then those who led the charge ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... mirror (i. e. God) which makes other things like to themselves, (that is, represents them as they are,) while nothing can represent Him like to Himself." Those who love the quarrels of commentators should look at the notes in the Variorum editions of Padua or Florence to see with what amusing asperity they have treated each other's solutions of the passage. Italian words of abuse have a sonorous quality which gives grandeur to a skirmish of critics. One is declared by his opponent to have ingarbugliato the clearest meaning; another guasta ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... its true worth and was unresponsive. "So you've got the job. They'd be sorry to part with Maggie." Then pursing her lips, she placed her season ticket in her purse, and said with condescending asperity: "I want ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... retire, my lord," observed the elder Miss Ossulton, with great asperity: "I have been trying to catch the eye of Mrs Lascelles ...
— The Three Cutters • Captain Frederick Marryat
... assuaged, and laudable effort made to conform to new conditions, still convictions formed and baptized in the fiery ordeal of war, blood and material loss require fortitude, generosity and patriotism to soften their asperity, and much kindly intercourse to promote the general welfare. The increased desire in this direction is evidenced at each recurring "Decoration Day," when the Blue and the Gray harmoniously intermingle, recalling ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... than believe all the absurdities of such an hypothesis as that of Paulus, I could believe Christianity to be what it professes to be." "I may say the same of that of Strauss," said the other, with equal asperity; "if I had no better escape than his, I could say to him, as Agippa to Paul, 'Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.'" "For my part," exclaimed the Deist, who was perfectly contented with his brief ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... had in it something wild and agitated. I screamed between surprise and terror—Hazlewood mistook the nature of my alarm, and, when Brown advanced towards me as if to speak, commanded him haughtily to stand back, and not to alarm the lady. Brown replied, with equal asperity, he had no occasion to take lessons from him how to behave to that or any other lady. I rather believe that Hazlewood, impressed with the idea that he belonged to the band of smugglers, and had some bad purpose in view, heard and understood him imperfectly. He snatched the gun from ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... as Ronald sat reading in his own rooms, he was much surprised at hearing a well-known voice at the door, inquiring with some asperity whether Mr. Le Breton was at home. He listened to the voice in intense astonishment. It ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... think," replied Mr. Gillett with some asperity, "you need be apprehensive on that score, Captain Macpherson. Sir Charles and ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... man in Christendom to have accepted the testimony of Mr. Bayne's heart-throbs. He intimated with some asperity that he knew better than anyone else what Lady Clare did say, and he pointed out that she had just cause for resentment against a mother who had placed her in such an embarrassing position. The controversy ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... all right," I replied, not quite rid of my asperity over their lack of decision about ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... stray-sheet, probably the outcast fraction of some English Periodical, such as they name Magazine, appears something like a Dissertation on this very subject of Fashionable Novels! It sets out, indeed, chiefly from a Secular point of view; directing itself, not without asperity, against some to me unknown individual named Pelham, who seems to be a Mystagogue, and leading Teacher and Preacher of the Sect; so that, what indeed otherwise was not to be expected in such a fugitive fragmentary ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... an insolent scoundrel," cried Silas, and, feeling that he had made a ridiculous exhibition of asperity, and at the same time bewildered by a dozen alarms, he turned ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... political leaders that Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll declared that each party would like to beat the other without electing its own candidates. Although the financial issue was kept in the background, the tariff was fought out again somewhat as it had been in 1888. The New York Sun shed some asperity over the contest by calling the friends of Cleveland "the adorers of fat witted mediocrity," and the nominee himself as the "perpetual candidate" and the "stuffed prophet"; and then added a ray of humor by advocating ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... the malign chances of fortune that this letter never reached its destination, General Hampden did not learn of Oliver's death until some weeks later, when he heard of it by accident. It was a terrible blow to him, for time was softening the asperity of his temper, and he had just made up his mind to make friends with his son. He attributed the failure to inform him of Oliver's illness and death to the ...
— The Christmas Peace - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... contradiction is naturally so strong in Lismahago, that I believe in my conscience he has rummaged, and read, and studied with indefatigable attention, in order to qualify himself to refute established maxims, and thus raise trophies for the gratification of polemical pride. — Such is the asperity of his self-conceit, that he will not even acquiesce in a transient compliment made to his own individual in particular, or to his country ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary and cannot impart it; till I am known and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the publick should consider me as owing that to a patron which Providence has enabled me to do ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... evil effects of his encounter he did, and that was to swallow ten two-grain quinine pills, which he managed to put into his mouth before the ghost had time to interfere. Having done this, he turned with some asperity to ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... stimulating the palate. Conversation would become dull and vapid, if negligence were not sometimes roused, and sluggishness quickened, by due severity of reprehension. But acids unmixed will distort the face and torture the palate; and he that has no other qualities than penetration and asperity, he whose constant employment is detection and censure, who looks only to find faults, and speaks only to punish them, will soon ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... was almost out. It hung on the edge of his lips. A moment longer he hugged it deliciously. He loved these little conversations with his wife. Never a shade of asperity entered into them. And this one in particular afforded him a ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... a breathless, day-to-day struggle for bare existence it need only exist among railway companies where lines have been built in excess of the needs of the population. With the increase in population and the growth of trade the asperity of the conditions necessarily becomes mitigated, until at last, when the traffic has assumed proportions which will afford all competitors alike a reasonable profit on their shares, the management ceases to be exposed to any more temptation ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... tongue. As in life, so in study, it is dangerous to do more things than one at a time; and the mind is not to be harassed with unnecessary obstructions, in a way, of which the natural and unavoidable asperity is such as too frequently ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... the girl with some asperity, "if there is anything on earth that changes its mind as often as a weather-vane, that ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... them, but in forgetting his own rules that nations act from adequate motives relative to their interests, and not from metaphysical speculation; that we cannot draw an indictment against a whole people; that there is a species of hostile justice which no asperity of war wholly extinguishes in the minds of a civilised people. "Steady independent minds," he had once said, "when they have an object of so serious a concern to mankind as government under their contemplation, will disdain to assume the part of satirists and declaimers." Show the ...
— Burke • John Morley
... to leave us here in rags and beggary, while you are amusing yourself in London?" replied Mrs Rainscourt, with asperity. "With your altered circumstances, you will have no want of society, either male or female," continued the lady, with an emphasis upon the last word—"and a wife ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... was still more attracted by the controversy that then raged in Edinburgh and elsewhere on the value of Phrenology and Animal Magnetism. Hamilton, as all students of contemporary philosophy are aware, denounced the pretensions of Phrenology with curious vehemence and asperity. It was the only doctrine, his friends said, that he could not even tolerate. On Animal Magnetism he held a very different opinion, and he wrote to Greg encouraging his enthusiasm in that direction. 'There ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... the influence of the Oxford writers came next: on this subject I knew we should not agree, though of course it was interesting to me to hear Mr. Kingsley's opinion. He spoke with some asperity of one or two of the leaders, though his chief objection was to certain young men who had put themselves forward as champions of the movement. Of Mr. Keble he spoke very kindly. He said he had at one time been much under the influence of these writings. I mentioned Alexander Knox as being perhaps ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... plainly furnished, but represented the romance of her life to old Susanna. Memories of her youth came back and softened the asperity of age, her wrinkled face taking on gentler lines and her harsh voice a tenderer tone. But to-day she was in haste. She felt herself needed at The Maples, even with the capable Deacon Meakin left to "hold the fort," as he expressed it. Going ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... the "conversations" between leaders which had taken place during the winter, said that since no definite agreement had been reached the Government had decided to reopen the matter in the House. This meant, as Redmond pointed out with some asperity, that the Prime Minister had accepted responsibility for taking the initiative in making proposals to meet objections whose reasonableness he did not admit. The Opposition, he thought, should have been left to put ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... afterwards as a novelist. Despite her firm republican sympathies, emphatic disdain for mere rank and wealth, and her small mercy for the foibles of the fashionable world, she can enter into its spirit, paint its allurements without exaggeration, and indicate its shortcomings with none of that asperity of the outsider which always suggests some unconscious envy lurking ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... frivolous tale. She was satisfied with anything that ended happily and had nothing in it that was unpleasant, or difficult, demanding thought. She exalted her preferences into high canons. A novel ought to conform to her requirements. A novelist (she thought of him with some asperity) had no right to be obscure, or depressing, or to add needless unpleasantness to the unpleasantness that had to be. The Great Men ...
— Life and Death of Harriett Frean • May Sinclair
... in Italy during the 18th century. On these tragedies it is difficult to pronounce a judgment, as the taste and system of the author underwent considerable change and modification during the intervals which elapsed between the three periods of their publication. An excessive harshness of style, an asperity of sentiment and total want of Poetical ornament are the characteristics of his first four tragedies, Filippo, Polinice, Antigone and Virginia. These faults were in some measure corrected in the six tragedies ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... doctrines as the Peripatetics; they cling to words with great tenacity; and as they cannot bear to have them taken from them one after another, they become more fierce, and rough, and harsher both in their language and manners. But Panaetius, wishing to avoid their moroseness and asperity, would not approve of either the bitterness of their sentiments, or their captious way of arguing: and so in one respect he was more gentle, and in the other more intelligible. And he was always quoting Plato, and Aristotle, and Xenocrates, and Theophrastus, and Dicaearchus, ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... and controversies in England were very amusing. Yet, in spite of the personal bitterness growing out of her own irritable temper and professional rivalry, she remained a great artistic favorite with the public. Underneath the asperity and obstinacy of her character there was a vein of deep tenderness and generosity, which she showed in various cases, especially in forwarding the interests of struggling artists. Michael Kelly, the Irish composer, in his "Reminiscences," gives the following instance. ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... new Abraham, not without a touch of asperity, "whar yew been these six months? A-leavin' me ter die of apron-strings an' doctors! Of course I didn't 'spect nuthin' o' yew when yew was jist a bachelor, an' we'd sort o' lost sight er each other fer many a year, but arter yew got connected ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... Demilt wishes to say," cut in Miss Doolittle with some asperity, "is that Mr. Thomas Faulkenstone Demilt is her brother." She did not add, as extreme candour would have urged, "And I have some hope—remote, alas! but there—of becoming sister to ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... is rebuked more forcibly upon another occasion, when the nymph bids the priest with asperity to "hold his ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... implore you, And you will be indignant too, I vow! SIR JOSEPH. I will hear of no defence, Attempt none if you're sensible. That word of evil sense Is wholly indefensible. Go, ribald, get you hence To your cabin with celerity. This is the consequence Of ill-advised asperity ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... breakfast, when Miss Osborne, with the asperity of her age and character, ventured to make some remark reflecting slightingly upon the Major's appearance or behaviour—the master of the house interrupted her. "You'd have been glad enough to git him for yourself, Miss O. But them ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... without you; and she will die, you say, unless she has change." Then hesitating, and turning very red, Hetty stammered, "I can pay you any thing—which would be necessary to compensate you: we have money enough." Dr. Eben bowed, and answered with some asperity: ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... so," said the old gentleman, putting on his spectacles, and looking over them at me with asperity, while he folded his paper into a convenient shape. "I wish to read you what must have made me have that instinct. It was this editorial. Listen, and see if it was ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain
... to blame for Chance, our foreman, losin' the use of his right hand," Mrs. Chadron said, with asperity. "Did Nola tell you about the ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... conflict between the parties grew steadily in bitterness, despite the conciliatory and engaging manner in which Hamilton presented his cause in his state papers and despite the constant efforts of Washington to soften the asperity of ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... of all the players at every change of fortune. Even the young ladies, all but Miss Simmons, seemed to be equally sensible of the passion of gaining money with the rest; and some of them behaved with a degree of asperity which quite astonished him. After several changes of fortune, it happened that Miss Simmons and Harry were the only remaining players; all the rest, by the laws of the game, had forfeited all pretensions to ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... I never will," he replied, with a touch of asperity; "but I feel that Fred has shown very little ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... this narrative are confirmed by Lord Clarendon.—'Continuation of his Life', p. 33. It is difficult to speak of the persons concerned in this infamous transaction without some degree of asperity, notwithstanding they are, by a strange perversion of language, styled, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Where has the human machine gone wrong? It has gone wrong in the brain. What, is he 'wrong in the head'? Most assuredly, most strictly. He knows—none better—that when his wife employs a particular tone containing ten grains of asperity, and he replies in a particular tone containing eleven grains, the consequences will be explosive. He knows, on the other hand, that if he replies in a tone containing only one little drop of honey, the consequences may not be unworthy of two reasonable beings. ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... the victim of the accident, with some asperity. "I'm just changing the air in these tires. The other air was worn out, ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... with a flash of his old asperity, "nobody can't bluff me. You never ast me. You made your spiel, and you t'rowed me out, and I let it go at dat. And, say, friend, dis chasin' cows is outer sight. Dis is de whitest bunch of sports I ever travelled with. You'll let me stay, ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... they were disposed to filch each other's toy horses and hoops, and use each other's small persons as targets for balls, thrown as bombs in a fashion far from polite. Anxious maids and nurses hunted them homewards, not without slight asperity on the one part, on the other occasional squealings and free fights. But upon the babies, engaging even in naughtiness, George Lovegrove had ceased to bestow any attention. He went forward blindly, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... you're drivin' at," Bert said with asperity. "An' all I can tell you is, livin' or dead, in a job or out, no matter what happens to me, if you will lead that way, you will, an' there's nothin' ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... help what you understood." The mother spoke with some asperity of manner. "She calls herself Gray, but you can have it anything you please; it ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... apples, fairly, among three boys, and she was surprised and displeased to receive no answer although to the best of her knowledge and belief, he was looking fixedly at her. She repeated her question crisply, without visible effect; then summoned him by name with increasing asperity. Twice she called him, while all his fellow pupils turned to stare at the gazing boy. She advanced ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... him high-tempered beyond the requisites of manhood," she replied, with something like asperity in her tone. "I cannot endure your meek, mild mannered men, who seem to forget their sex, and almost make me long to change my own with them, that their sweet dispositions may be ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... began supper: neither spoke: Anthony sat slowly stirring his tea, and staring moodily into the flames: the bacon on his plate lay untouched. From time to time his mother, laying down her knife and fork, looked across at him in unconcealed asperity, pursing her wide, ungainly mouth. At last, abruptly setting down her cup, she ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... was not unsuitable to his appearance. I lost some of his good-will, by treating a heretical writer with more regard than, in his opinion, a heretick could deserve. I honoured his orthodoxy, and did not much censure his asperity. A man who has settled his opinions, does not love to have the tranquillity of his conviction disturbed; and at seventy-seven it is time to ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... that, after this introduction, I made haste to explain every particular. My mother was surprised and grieved. She rebuked me, with some asperity, for my reserves. Had I acquainted her with my brother's demands, she could have apprized me of all that I had since discovered. My brother, she asserted, was involved beyond any one's power to extricate him, and his temper, his credulity, ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... he mentioned the Short View in the preface to his Fables. He complained, with some asperity, of the harshness with which he had been treated, and urged some matters in mitigation. But, on the whole, he frankly acknowledged that he had been justly reproved. "If," said he, "Mr. Collier be my enemy, let him triumph. If he be my friend, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... leave to doubt it." His lordship's tone abated nothing of its asperity. "But that can wait. If Captain Blood will show you his commission, perhaps that will set all doubts at rest, and we may proceed. I shall be glad to reach ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... advancement in public life. The greatest men practised it, and as they held action to be the criterion of oratory, made the best actors their models; nor was this a groundless opinion adopted by a few or superficial men; for Demosthenes having remarked with some asperity that the worst orators were heard in the rostrum in preference to him, the celebrated actor SATYRUS, in order to show him how much grace, dignity, and action add to the celebrity of a public man, repeated to him several ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... dauntless conduct on the field of battle shows him to have been a man of fearless spirit; and he was universally allowed to be an accomplished disciplinarian. His melancholy end, too, disarms censure of its asperity. Whatever may have been his faults and errors, he in a manner expiated them by the hardest lot that can befall a brave soldier, ambitious of renown—an unhonored grave in a strange land: a memory clouded by misfortune, and a name for ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... assembly, then in session, on the election of senator and governor. "On hearing Mr. Madison's observations respecting Mr. Monroe," says Mr. Lear, who wrote a detailed account of Washington's sickness and death, "he appeared much affected, and spoke with some degree of asperity on the subject, which I endeavored to moderate, as I always did on such occasions. On his retiring, I observed to him that he had better take something to remove his cold. He answered: 'No, you know I never take anything for a cold. Let it go ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... sudden asperity of his voice coerced her as a bit might do, "you will go to Capharnahum, you will seek him, you will say Iohanan is descended into the tombs to ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... the constable with asperity; "but I think you haven't half searched. Maybe he's hiding somewhere up ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... difficult matter to do that," responds the good wife, with some asperity in look and tone. "It seems hard and old; some lean cow you have killed, to save her from ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... were not amiable. They might have angered another man; but Cardo detected a tremor in the voice and an anxious look in the eyes which softened their asperity. ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... or barracks that it was a relief to me to see from Mr. Law's and Mr. Carroll's places that there were some gentlemen's residences in the capital. When I said something of the kind to my guide, he replied, with some asperity, that there were many gentlemen's residences at Alexandria and Arlington and Georgetown, only a short gallop away, and that it would not be many years until Washington itself could claim as many as New ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... imprison; but, as we march by cantonments and the regimental (particuliers) officers are the first to show a bad example, the punishments are neither sufficiently known nor sufficiently seen. Everything smacks of indiscipline, of disgust at the king's service, and of asperity towards one's self. I see with pain that it will be indispensable to put in practice the most violent and the harshest measures." The king's army, meanwhile, was continuing to fall back; a general outcry arose at Paris against the general's supineness. On ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... hijo mio, at my sorrowful plight," said the bruised Ricardo, with some asperity; "I have met with dangers of venomous serpents, and been stabbed cruelly ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... quite evident that there was nothing in the world else she cared so much to do, and though indeed it was equally evident that she was one of the best-natured little creatures in the world, she did not deny herself a certain more or less constant asperity of reference to occupations which kept her on her feet from morning till night, and made her the slave of the whole house, in spite of four big idle daughters. And she with rheumatism too, so bad that she could hardly ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... twelfth person who's mentioned that," Norah said, with some asperity. "Anyhow, I never counted them; I only became rich in a vague way, and it was very comforting. I'm glad I had that comfort, for it was ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... Under Trajan, then, we place the maturity of Juvenal's genius as it is displayed in the first ten Satires. The four following ones show a falling off in concentration and dramatic power, and are no doubt later productions, when years of good government had softened his asperity of mind. The fifteenth, sixteenth, and to a certain extent the twelfth, show unmistakable signs of senility. The fifteenth contains evidence of its date. The consulship of Juncus (127 A.D.) is mentioned as recent. [18] We may therefore safely ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... by surprise, so sudden was the intrusion, and so intense was the boy's manner. He remained silent a moment from astonishment, and then said with asperity— ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... was my first, last, and only husband," she replied, with a touch of asperity, yet not as if she meant it ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... Bryce. Yet, whether we look upon him as an Irishman, an Englishman, or an American, let us rejoice that he cast his lot with us, and that we have had the benefit of his illuminating pen. He was not always right; he was sometimes unjust; he often told the truth with "needless asperity,"[216] as Parkman put it; but his merits so outweighed his defects that he had a marked influence on opinion, and probably on history, during his thirty-five years of journalistic work, when, according to James Bryce, he showed a courage such ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... to support her husband's child when he did so little himself for his family. "My goodness! all he gives us wouldn't half pay Nelly's board," she had declared; and as her grievances were still fresh in her mind, she greeted her step-child with even more asperity ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... when one hears of such things as these, it becomes a duty, perhaps, a little to soften that extreme asperity with which most men speak of murder. To hear people talk, you would suppose that all the disadvantages and inconveniences were on the side of being murdered, and that there were none at all in not being murdered. But considerate men think otherwise. "Certainly," says Jeremy Taylor, "it is a less ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... years has maintained something like peace between discordant elements. For the board-room is often a battle-field where political or sectarian animosities exhibit themselves in a rugged way. The clergyman, by force of character, has at all events succeeded in moderating the personal asperity of the contending parties. Many of the stout, elderly farmers who sit round the table have been elected year after year, no one disputing with them that tedious and thankless office. The clerk, always a solicitor, is also present, and his opinion is continually required. Knotty points of ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... his companion with a touch of asperity. He could not stand it that Elsmere should be so much narrowed and warped by that wife of his, and her prejudices. Why should that gifted creature be cribbed, cabined, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... riding," said Mrs. Macpherson, with some asperity, for there was a little natural jealousy between these ladies on the subject of their ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... arrangement, or want of arrangement, is obvious; and it must have caused much friction in the House. We can imagine the officer in charge of the finances resenting the intrusion of his brother of the library with an asperity not wholly in accordance with fraternal charity. And yet, so strong is the tendency of human nature to put up with whatever exists, rather than be at the trouble of changing it, no effectual steps in the way of remedy were taken until the fifteenth century. ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... that his party had gone too far, and hoped time would soften their asperity, and reclaim those who had so loudly complained of persecution, from continuing to be persecutors. He enlarged on the beautiful simplicity of primitive worship, as described in Scripture; talked of the mistakes which had proceeded from a misapplication of the word Bishop ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... it to read by," Grandmother announced, with considerable asperity, "and you don't need to hunt around for no more lamps, neither. I've got 'em ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... as seen from the Excelsior's deck, seemed to bear out Mr. Banks' sweeping indictment of the day before. A few low, dome-like hills, yellow and treeless as sand dunes, scarcely raised themselves above the horizon. The air, too, appeared to have taken upon itself a dry asperity; the sun shone with a hard, practical brilliancy. Miss Keene raised her eyes to Senor Perkins with a pretty impatience that she sometimes indulged in, as one of the privileges of accepted ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... own conceit, and you're a regular old fool," rejoined Mr Culpepper, with asperity; "one too knowing and the other not half knowing enough. Master Keene, I hope you are hungry, for we have a very nice dinner. Do you like ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... the President, on reaching the last paragraph of Mr. Motley's letter, in which he begged respectfully to resign his post, "without waiting to learn what Mr. Seward had done or proposed to do, exclaimed, with a not unnatural asperity, 'Well, let him go,' and 'on hearing this,' said Mr. Seward, laughing, 'I did not read my dispatch.'" Many persons will think that the counsel for the defence has stated the plaintiff's case so strongly that there is nothing left for him but to show his ingenuity and his friendship ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... punctilious exactness, etc. The entire passage follows pretty closely the interpretation of Lamb: "Among the distinguishing features of that wonderful character, one of the most interesting (yet painful) is that soreness of mind which makes him treat the intrusions of Polonius with harshness, and that asperity which he puts on in his interviews with Ophelia. These tokens of an unhinged mind (if they be not mixed in the latter case with a profound artifice of love, to alienate Ophelia by affected discourtesies, so ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... the twenty-seventh of February, 1832, the House took into consideration the report of the Committee on Mr Warburton's Anatomy Bill. Mr Henry Hunt attacked that bill with great asperity. In reply to him ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... well, sir!" she retorted, with a distinct trace of asperity. "I am not a heathen, I'd thank you to remember—and when I'm a wife I shall ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... Puritan of the old school—but that was Miss Graythorpe's gloss in her own mind on what he did say. However, her mother never did come round. She cherished her condemnation of her daughter to the end, forgiving her again more suo, if anything with increased asperity, on ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... silent; he compared the gentleness of this Creole's rebukes with the asperity of his advocacy of right, and felt humiliated. But M. Grandissime spoke ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... meet with him," he continued, "I shall take great pleasure in giving you my impressions by letter, or in person, of your nephew-in-law." "Don't call him that!" exclaimed the old lady with much asperity. "I don't acknowledge the title. But I won't say any more about him," with a grim smile, "or you may think I don't ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... agreeing with James, but cherishing a strong conviction that the father and son would now leave off rubbing against each other; since no unprejudiced person could doubt of the strong affection of the father, nor of the warm gratitude of the son. In spite of the asperity with which James spoke of the Earl, she was beginning to like him almost as much as she esteemed him. This had not been the case in their childhood, when he used to be praised by the elders for his obedience to his grandmother and his progress in the Northwold Grammar School; ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... advisers informed me, with great asperity in her look and tone, that "it would be better for me to lay by the pen, and betake myself to some more useful employment; that she thanked her God that she could make a shirt, and see to the cleaning ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Philps came up and down the stairs several times but she did not appear to see Mrs. Sykes. Jane stopped crying and wandered out into the garden. Still Mrs. Sykes waited and presently Aunt Amy came in, looking quite excited and asked eagerly what time it was. Mrs. Sykes told her, adding with asperity that these were fine goings-on, and that they'd all be late for the wedding if they ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... la Dama Errante is not of the sort that lives very long; it is not a painting with aspirations towards the museum but an impressionist canvas; perhaps as a work it has too much asperity, is too hard, ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... and enters the room, holding out her hand to SIR TIMOTHY. Her eyes are black-rimmed from sleeplessness; but whatever asperity she has displayed overnight has disappeared, and she is again full of softness ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... adequate picture of the past; so far it worked in the same direction with the novels. Its most important offices aside from this were perhaps to present large and kindly views of literature and literary characters, especially through biographical essays; and to ameliorate somewhat the prevailing asperity of periodical criticism. ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... was in the last year of his administration. His freedom from sectional asperity, his long life in the public service, and his peace-loving and conciliatory character, were all guarantees against his precipitating a conflict between the Federal Government and any of the States; but the feeble power that he possessed in the closing months of his term to mold the policy of ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... much critical asperity, the last two volumes of Froude's English in Ireland for Macmillan's Magazine* he referred to Home Rule as a moderate and constitutional movement. His own History was not completed till 1890. But when Gladstone introduced his first Home Rule Bill, in 1886, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... the money in your purse," replied Mrs. Lively with asperity, at the same time opening her purse with an impatient movement. "It isn't here: I knew it wasn't. I tell you again I put it in your purse, and you've dropped ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... made a greater mistake," Hood returned with asperity. "But the question that now agitates us is simply this: do we eat or do ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... enchanted with his new name for her. Indeed, a few years ago she had been described by an only half-appreciative friend as "a splendid girl without a mite of tact," and if she had succeeded in somewhat softening the asperity of her natural frankness, there was enough of it left to lend a delicate shade of humour to ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... were filled with the inspiring sense of discovery; and, as often as they met, their invisible Lord was in their midst. It was like heaven upon earth. While Jerusalem around them was going on in its ordinary course of worldliness and ecclesiastical asperity, these few humble souls were felicitating themselves with a secret which they knew to contain within it the blessedness of mankind and the ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... asperity and his tact, with fits of brusqueness subdued by an almost affectionate contempt, who conducted all their affairs, as I have seen a trustworthy and experienced old nurse rule the infinite perplexities of a room ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... retorted the Count with asperity—"that I'm willing to stand by and let you moon round Paris at this hour of the morning, hunting for a taxicab that isn't to be found and running God-knows-what risk of being stuck up by some misbegotten Apache? ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... than ourselves. And yet the natural man cries out against the philosophy that rejects beggars. It is a thousand to one that they are impostors, but yet we do ourselves a wrong by hardening our hearts against them. At last, without turning round, I told her that I should give her nothing,—with some asperity, doubtless, for the effort to refuse creates a bitterer repulse than is necessary. She still followed us a little farther, but at last gave it up, with a deep groan. I could not have performed this act of heroism on my ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Clark, whom they had been at so much pains and expense to lay, seemed merely mad. When Adelle reiterated her conviction that she herself had discovered at last the heirs of the lost Edward S., President Smith demanded with some asperity whether Mrs. Davis—Mrs. Clark—understood what this meant. Adelle replied very simply that she supposed it meant the California Clarks getting at last their half of Clark's Field, which certainly belonged to them more than ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... as his singing-voice, was sweet, but with a kind of trenchant edge upon it, a genial asperity, that ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... Professor's mind; in fact, she had known it for some time, but had assured herself that he would never have the courage to put his hints, and suggestions, and allusions, into an actual declaration. So she replied with some asperity, "What made you think I was looking ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... that since the disclosure the chaplain's reticence had become remarkable. When his own wife questioned him on the subject (very naturally), he checked her with some asperity, and read her a lecture on feminine curiosity that moved the poor woman, even to weeping. Mrs. Danvers was greatly surprised and disconcerted by the decision with which Mr. Fullarton rejected her suggestion, that he should aid and abet in thwarting ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... me!" Fairchild spoke with some asperity. "I said that he had disappeared, and I want some help in hunting for him. He may be injured, for all I know, and if he 's out here in the mountains anywhere, it's almost sure death for him unless he can get some ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... needed in turn to be explained. The balmy night, the time for talk, the amusement of Paris, the memory of younger passages, gave a lift to the occasion. Nick had already forgotten his little brush with Julia on his leaving Peter's tea-party at her side, and that he had been almost disconcerted by the asperity with which she denounced the odious man he had taken it into his head to force upon her. Impertinent and fatuous she had called him; and when Nick began to plead that he was really neither of these things, though he could imagine his manner might sometimes suggest them, she had declared ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... me as that of a friend. With regard to the style of his book, I heartily subscribe to the description with which the 'Times' winds up its able and appreciative review. It is marked throughout with the most serious and earnest conviction, but is without a single word from first to last of asperity or insinuation against opponents; and this not from any deficiency of feeling as to the importance of the issue, but from a deliberate and resolutely maintained self-control, and from an over-ruling, ever-present ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... Jemmy, don't be silly!" Kate spoke with an asperity that brought a wide grin to Big Liza's face, because it sounded as though the Madam were ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... sincerity; for the Dictionary was duly read aloud to her, betwixt sleep and waking, as it proceeded towards an infinitely distant completion; and the Doctor was a little sore on the subject of mummies, and sometimes resented an allusion with asperity. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... anyhow, who felt 'awfully spifligatingly happy' on that occasion," replied Mildred, with a touch of asperity in her voice. ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... inheritance, nor to the necessity of his parting from the estate, which appears now to be happily restored to its former splendour; but possessing some knowledge of a lamentable fact, that neither Mr. Pettigrew nor Mr. Ashpitel appears to be aware of, I feel inclined to soften the asperity of the reflections quoted; and palliate, although I may not justify, the apparently reckless proceedings of the eccentric fifth Lord, as he is called. In the years 1796 and 1797, after finishing my clerkship, I had a seat in the chambers of the late Jas. Hanson, Esq., an eminent conveyancer of Lincoln's ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... and austere, that disappointments have soured, or prosperity has elated you, or that habits of command have rendered you quick in expression, and impatient of contradiction; or if, from whatever other cause, you have contracted an unhappy peevishness of temper, or asperity of manners, or harshness and severity of language, (remember that these defects are by no means incompatible with an aptness to perform services of substantial kindness); if nature has been confirmed by habit till at length ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... be amusing," said Ginger with more than his usual asperity. "Mr. Archer says seven-pence. Well, I'll say five guineas. Any advance on five guineas, ladies and gentlemen? ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... broke in his young wife's voice, with just the hint of asperity in it. "She must trudge out her tantrum first. I think her idea was to show that she remembered the old place and the lane where she used to pick blackberries. You needn't worry about her getting cold. She's lived a gipsy life ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... smile in the least nor reply to her appeal for forgiveness; he only waited until she was quiet, and then went on with increased asperity veiled in ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... playing nap, and the bagman proposed a game of cards. I remembered in time that I was an elder in the Nethergate U.F. Church and refused with some asperity. After that I shut my eyes again, for I wanted to think out ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... the nature of things that a man of Mr Dombey's mood, opposed to such a spirit as he had raised against himself, should be softened in the imperious asperity of his temper; or that the cold hard armour of pride in which he lived encased, should be made more flexible by constant collision with haughty scorn and defiance. It is the curse of such a nature—it is a main part of the heavy retribution ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it[769]; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the Publick should consider me as owing that to a Patron, which Providence has enabled ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... in defence of my friend. What I write is not written on slate; and no finger, not of Time himself, who dips it in the clouds of years, can efface it. To condemn what is evil and to commend what is good is consistent. To soften an asperity, to speak all the good we can after worse than we wish, is that, and more. If I must understand the meaning of consistency as many do, I wish I may be inconsistent with all my enemies. There are many hearts which have risen higher ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... and was silent. Melancholy ideas have many charms when we have not been ourselves deeply wretched, but when grief in all its asperity has seized upon the soul, we no longer hear without shuddering certain words which formerly only excited in us reveries ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... into oblivion by its own weight, with original essays on the most interesting subjects of the time, religious, or political; in which the titles of the books or pamphlets prefixed furnish only the name and occasion of the disquisition. I do not arraign the keenness, or asperity of its damnatory style, in and for itself, as long as the author is addressed or treated as the mere impersonation of the work then under trial. I have no quarrel with them on this account, as long as ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... department to control a colony (as had been urged in the case of Cyprus). He notes: 'Gambetta tells me that he has at once had an application from a similar French Company—for the New Hebrides.' Lord Granville made official reply, with some asperity. But he sent a separate unofficial letter, in which, after treating of other matters, he smoothed over his more formal communication. These letters were received by Sir Charles on December 27th, 1881, on his return to Paris from Toulon.[Footnote: Later Sir Charles notes: 'My own objections ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... sell out," continued the Judge, with a trifle of asperity, "why on earth didn't you go to Bob Standish? Why didn't you go to an expert? And why didn't you have an audit made of Mix's company—why didn't you get a little information—why didn't you know what ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... bitterness against the English has lost much of its asperity, or rather has become merged in a new source of jealousy and apprehension: I allude to the incessant and wide-spreading irruptions from New-England. Word has been continually brought back to Communipaw, by those of the community who ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... yet not presuming to dictate its opinions; in the presence of which ignorance becomes enlightened and weakness strong; creating around its home an atmosphere of taste and intelligence, in which the rudest life loses some of its asperity, and the roughest toils much of their severity. Such is the form of female character we seek to create by so enlarged ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... grown a beard (very badly kept), and set up as a philosopher of the hyper-virtuous Jaques school. Of course he lectures us upon every vice which we have not, and every little frailty which we have, with a pointed asperity that upsets our temper for the day, and causes us long afterwards to bewail the evil hour in which we rescued such an ill-conditioned grumbler from the kindly waters ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... will not prove the testament to be a forgery. The signing and witnessing were done in my presence," said my uncle. He rose from his chair, instinctively locked up his bureau; and, if such stern features could assume an aspect of still greater asperity, it was when the interrogator thus continued:—"You were, as you observe, Mr S——, an eye-witness to the due subscription of this deed. If I am to clear myself from the imputation of unjustifiable curiosity, I must beg leave to examine yourself ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... mio, at my sorrowful plight," said the bruised Ricardo, with some asperity; "I have met with dangers of venomous serpents, and been stabbed cruelly by those ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... leave us here in rags and beggary, while you are amusing yourself in London?" replied Mrs Rainscourt, with asperity. "With your altered circumstances, you will have no want of society, either male or female," continued the lady, with an emphasis upon the last word—"and a wife ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... absurd one," interrupted the judge with some asperity. "I have no power to question ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... had many loud complaints from the forts of Terrenate, written by religious and laymen, of the governor there, Lucas de Bergara Gaviria—not only of his asperity and harsh government, but of his lack of balance in other things. Since these complaints were so numerous, I was obliged to get the opinion and resolution of the members of this royal Audiencia; but ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... a cheerful view of the matter," conceded the lady of the fort. Antonia looked at her with all the asperity which could be expressed in a fair ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... very good spirits to-day, Miss Monfort," said Mrs. Clayton, with unusual asperity on one occasion, when, holding Ernie in my arms, I lavished endearments upon him; "your king, indeed! your angel! I really believe you admire as well as love ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... paradoxes by exaggerated statements—to curry favour with existing prejudices and interests by garbled representations. He has, in a word, as it appears to us on a candid retrospect and without any feelings of controversial asperity rankling in our minds, sunk the philosopher and the friend of his species (a character to which he might have aspired) in the sophist and party-writer. The period at which Mr. Malthus came forward teemed with answers ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... and healthful. The asperity of winter is softened by the ocean streams coming from the south; the heat of summer is reduced by the high latitude and the mountains. Withal the Lord has blessed this celebrated country with rare ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... leaders that Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll declared that each party would like to beat the other without electing its own candidates. Although the financial issue was kept in the background, the tariff was fought out again somewhat as it had been in 1888. The New York Sun shed some asperity over the contest by calling the friends of Cleveland "the adorers of fat witted mediocrity," and the nominee himself as the "perpetual candidate" and the "stuffed prophet"; and then added a ray of humor by advocating the election of Cleveland. ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... elegantly, though usually in uneven lines; when in haste and distress of mind, in several letters during her imprisonment which I have read, much the contrary. The French editor makes this observation: "Who could believe that these writings are of the same epoch? The first denotes asperity and ostentation; the second indicates simplicity, softness, and nobleness. The one is that of Elizabeth, queen of England; the other that of her cousin, Mary Stuart. The difference of these two handwritings answers most evidently to that of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... appreciated this cordiality at its true worth and was unresponsive. "So you've got the job. They'd be sorry to part with Maggie." Then pursing her lips, she placed her season ticket in her purse, and said with condescending asperity: "I ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... interesting." Then Lear read the debates of the Virginia Assembly on the election of a Senator and Governor. "On hearing Mr. Madison's observations respecting Mr. Monroe, he appeared much affected, and spoke with some degree of asperity on the subject, which I endeavored to moderate," says Lear, "as I always did on such occasions. On his returning to bed, he appeared to be in perfect health, excepting the cold before mentioned, which he considered as trifling, and ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... but one more instance of her insolent asperity, which produced an admirable reply of the famous Lady Mary -Wortley Montague. Lady Sundon had received a pair of diamond ear-rings as a bribe for procuring a considerable post in Queen Caroline's family for a certain peer; and, decked with those jewels, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... is to say—well, no, not exactly," replied Mr. Brown, beginning his sentence with an asperity and positiveness that somehow did not hold out to its end. "She did say to me, I confess, how fond she was of dancing, and how she had refrained from saying much about it to you"—Mr. Port here interpolated a sceptical snort—"because she knew that taking her to the Casino would ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... Months ago,—it seems to be years now,—when Cecilia Holt had caught your fancy, I did regard her as the most fortunate girl. But I did not regard you as the happiest of men, because I felt sure that there was a something between you which would not suit. There is an asperity, rather than strictness, about her which I knew your spirit would not brook. She would have borne the battlings which would have arisen with an equal temper. She can indeed bear all things with equanimity—as she does her present position. But you, though you would have ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... crowsfeet at the corners of his eyes, and lurking under the shadow of the grim moustache, are little curves or dimples or something, that betray to the initiated the presence of a humorous vein that softens the asperity of the soldier. Some who best know him can detect there a symptom of tenderness and a possibility of sentiment, whose existence the major would indignantly deny. The erect carriage of the head, the square set of the shoulders, the firm ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... mind at once of any such hopes and aspirations," Mrs. Montague continued, with increased asperity, "for they will never be realized, since Ray Palmer is ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... with fiddlestick!" Mrs. Milliken said with some asperity. "And, as we are going to part, mamma, and as Horace has paid EVERYTHING on the journey as yet, and we have only brought a VERY few circular notes with us, perhaps you will have the kindness to give him your share ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... away from here,' said Albinia, with a shade of asperity, provoked by the spirit of enterprise in ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... failed in supplying the subsidies to which they were bound by treaty. The English commissioners remonstrated with the parliament of Scotland, the Scottish with that of England; the charges were reciprocally made and repelled in tones of asperity and defiance; and the occurrences of each day seemed to announce a speedy rupture between the two nations. Hitherto their ancient animosities had been lulled asleep by the conviction of their mutual ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... with the official presence, as its ruler, of such an equivocal character as this Mr. What-do-they-call-him—Francis Bond Head." Ever and anon the Tory press retorted on him in a spirit by no means calculated to soften the asperity of his heart. The most contemptuous epithets were freely bestowed upon him, and he was from time to time taunted with his humble origin. It seems almost unnecessary to say that those who indulged in such taunts as these had very little wherewith to reproach Mackenzie on the score of birth ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... the asperity with which his friend spoke. He little knew how easily acquaintance who call themselves friends can change when their interest comes in the slightest degree in competition with their friendship. Hurried by his impatient rival, and with his hands so much benumbed that he could scarcely feel how to ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... circumlocution, to his business-manager, to his butcher, or his baker. When Enthusius was a bachelor, he never criticized the table at his boarding-house without some reflection, and studying to take unto himself acceptable words whereby to soften the asperity of the criticism. The laws of society require that a man should qualify, soften, and wisely time his admonitions to those he meets in the outer world, or they will turn again and rend him. But to his own wife, in his own house and home, he can find fault without ceremony or softening. So he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... me," said Rampson with asperity; then correcting himself quickly, and with a rather ghastly smile, "I say, you two did ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... conceit, and you're a regular old fool," rejoined Mr Culpepper, with asperity; "one too knowing and the other not half knowing enough. Master Keene, I hope you are hungry, for we have a very nice dinner. Do you like ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... Clare, still in her sweet gentle voice, not at all as if she was angry, only expressing an obvious truth. Molly felt very guilty and very unhappy. Clare went on, with a shade of asperity in her tone: 'You see, I don't know what to do with you here if you don't eat enough to enable you to walk home. And I've been out for these three hours trapesing about the grounds till I'm as tired as can be, and missed my lunch and all.' Then, as if a new idea had struck her, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... would have defended her own sex with much asperity; instead, there was something oddly ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... dulcet phrases and entreaties and adjurations he did at last prevail with her to give him her pardon; nay, by joint consent, they tarried there a great while to the exceeding great delight of both. Indeed the lady, finding her lover's kisses smack much better than those of her husband, converted her asperity into sweetness, and from that day forth cherished a most tender love for Ricciardo; whereof, using all circumspection, they many a time had solace. God grant us ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... very well, sir!" she retorted, with a distinct trace of asperity. "I am not a heathen, I'd thank you to remember—and when I'm a wife I shall be ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... like la Dama Errante is not of the sort that lives very long; it is not a painting with aspirations towards the museum but an impressionist canvas; perhaps as a work it has too much asperity, is too hard, not ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... and he then kissed him tenderly. This and the marks of undisguised pleasure which he evinced surprised me, and I looked at Madame de Lamotte, who then remarked with some asperity— ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... and his whole appearance had in it something wild and agitated. I screamed between surprise and terror—Hazlewood mistook the nature of my alarm, and, when Brown advanced towards me as if to speak, commanded him haughtily to stand back, and not to alarm the lady. Brown replied, with equal asperity, he had no occasion to take lessons from him how to behave to that or any other lady. I rather believe that Hazlewood, impressed with the idea that he belonged to the band of smugglers, and had some bad purpose in view, heard and understood ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... whether we look upon him as an Irishman, an Englishman, or an American, let us rejoice that he cast his lot with us, and that we have had the benefit of his illuminating pen. He was not always right; he was sometimes unjust; he often told the truth with "needless asperity,"[216] as Parkman put it; but his merits so outweighed his defects that he had a marked influence on opinion, and probably on history, during his thirty-five years of journalistic work, when, according to James Bryce, he showed a courage such ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... that door?" said Mrs. Davis, unprimming her mouth slightly to say it, but speaking with asperity. "I have something important to say, and I can't say it with that racket in ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... subject.) Where has the human machine gone wrong? It has gone wrong in the brain. What, is he 'wrong in the head'? Most assuredly, most strictly. He knows—none better—that when his wife employs a particular tone containing ten grains of asperity, and he replies in a particular tone containing eleven grains, the consequences will be explosive. He knows, on the other hand, that if he replies in a tone containing only one little drop of honey, the consequences may not be unworthy of two reasonable beings. ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... in masquerade; and "dinner" was announced, and we all paired off with the utmost ceremony, and I found myself seated between Frank Lovell and dear old Mr. Lumley, and opposite the elder Miss Molasses, who scowled at me with an asperity of which I should have believed her unmeaning face incapable, as if she hated me on this particular evening more than all the other days of the year. I soon discovered the cause. Frank was more attentive to me than I had ever known him, although ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... might perhaps think that, assuming the prevailing type to be a good, plain, readable one, this uniformity need not necessarily be a bad thing; but had he the courage to give expression to this opinion he would most certainly be at once told, with that mixture of asperity and contempt so properly reserved for those who take cheerful views of anything, that without well-defined types of character there can be neither national comedy nor whimsical novel; and as it is impossible to imagine any person sufficiently ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... party had gone too far, and hoped time would soften their asperity, and reclaim those who had so loudly complained of persecution, from continuing to be persecutors. He enlarged on the beautiful simplicity of primitive worship, as described in Scripture; talked of the ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... said she, in a raised voice, and with a slight asperity; "you know how you jumped up, looking like a ghost, the moment I opened the door, and the first thing you said after I 'd told you that they 'd found a murdered man in the barn, ...
— Two Days' Solitary Imprisonment - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... a gentleman that you forgit to be a man!" remarked Rosalie with asperity. "Now you listen to me. I've told you that she's held two materializing seances for Robert H. Norcross, haven't I? I've told you it is crooked materialization—even if there was such a thing as real cabinet spooks, which there ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... you understood." The mother spoke with some asperity of manner. "She calls herself Gray, but you can have it anything you please; ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... the tail states it to be sold by Fitch of Regent Street. The bait secures its amount of flat-fish; for that evening, Captain de Camp was more than usually lucky—he caught enough at ecarte to clear himself;—a freak of fortune that caused no asperity in the noble breast of Brown; for here are his own thoughts in his own words:—"December 26th, Wednesday (Boxing-day).—My dear friend, De Camp, has this day given us all tokens of the warmest attachment—sadly ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... unbroken solitude. Beyond to the eastward was the interminable defiance of the unexplored coast—black, cold, and repellent. Below them lay the Arctic Ocean, buried beneath frozen chaos. No words can describe the confusion of this sea of ice—the hopeless asperity of it, the weariness of its torn and tortured surface. Only at the remote horizon did distance and the fallen snow mitigate its roughness and soften its outlines; and beyond it, in the yet unattainable recesses of the great circle, they looked toward the Pole itself. It was ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... pieces composed by men of poetical talents, in some of which the adventures of the gods were celebrated and in others the vices and absurdities of individuals were attacked with much asperity. The works of all those poets probably died with them; nor is there any reason to believe that the loss of them is to be regretted—they are mentioned here only because they form a link in the chain of this history. By them, such as they were, however, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... exchanged philosophical observations on life with the old negress who was dabbling the clothes. What impressed this woman was the inequality in life. She jumped to the unwarranted conclusion that the Professor and the Friend were very rich, and spoke with asperity of the difficulty she experienced in getting shoes and tobacco. It was useless to point out to her that her alfresco life was singularly blessed and free from care, and the happy lot of any one who ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... subjects. Has not Lonee Sing robbed all his cousins of their estates, and added them to his own, and thereby got the means of bribing the King's servants to let him do what he likes?" "What," said the Rajah, with some asperity, "should you, a mere soldier, know about State affairs? Do you suppose that all the members of any family can be equal? Must there not be a head to all families to keep the rest in order? Nothing goes on well in families or governments where all are equal, and there is ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... man spoke several times with excusable asperity of "buttons," and after another psalm and a sounding benediction the religious exercises were finished, and the real business of the evening, the spelling-bee and the kissing ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... rejoined Martha, rather quickly, and with some degree of asperity; "and if you'll give her my grateful dooty, I'd like to leave as soon as ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... leaders which had taken place during the winter, said that since no definite agreement had been reached the Government had decided to reopen the matter in the House. This meant, as Redmond pointed out with some asperity, that the Prime Minister had accepted responsibility for taking the initiative in making proposals to meet objections whose reasonableness he did not admit. The Opposition, he thought, should have been left to put forward ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... earth not?" said MacIan, with a sudden asperity. "Why shouldn't we quarrel about a word? What is the good of words if they aren't important enough to quarrel over? Why do we choose one word more than another if there isn't any difference between them? If you called a woman a chimpanzee instead of an angel, wouldn't there be a quarrel ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... clothes, without so much as changing my posture. As no part of the overhanging earth intervened between me and them, I could see them entire, though the deepness of the shade rendered me almost completely invisible. I heard them say to each other, in tones of vehement asperity, "Curse the rascal! which way can he be gone?" The reply was, "Damn him! I wish we had him but safe once again!"—"Never fear!" rejoined the first; "he cannot have above half a mile the start of us." They ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... parentage. Those who tried to pump Patsy Kenny about these matters embarked, and they knew it, on perilous seas. Patsy's stiff face as he repelled the gossips was a sight to see. He had also to keep at bay many questions about Susan Horridge and her boy, in doing which he showed some asperity and thereby gave a handle ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... surgeon," he said with some asperity; "in fact, I may say I have not seen a dead body since my hospital days. I ... I ... know nothing about these things. This is a matter for the police. They must be ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... soften the asperity of the maimed beauty. "Every woman is charming according to Lotte," she said; "I never knew an eye with so little true appreciation. In the first place, what woman on earth could look well in such a thing as that she had ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... ain't all equal, Mrs Screwbury," said the cook, recurring, with some asperity, to a former remark, "an' nothink you or anybody else can ever say will bring ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... clearly of opinion that your Majesty should merely say that an answer will be sent and the propriety of granting an audience may then be fully considered by your Majesty's confidential servants. Mr Stanley represents Lord Durham as not speaking with much violence or asperity, but seeming to feel much the censure conveyed in ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... enjoying it all, but I think Kermit regards me as a little soft, because I am so eagerly looking forward to the end, when I shall see darling, pretty Mother, my own sweetheart, and the very nicest of all nice daughters—you blessed girlie. Do you remember when you explained, with some asperity, that of course you wished Ted were at home, because you didn't have anybody as a really intimate companion, whereas Mother had "old Father"? It is a great comfort to have a daughter to whom I can write about all kinds ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... was no asperity in her voice now, only puzzled helplessness. It was the inevitable surrender of the commonplace in the light of a greater understanding—in the realization of an unknown law to the significance of which some never attain. She had ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... with its opprobrious epithet (coined on the spot), was addressed with sudden asperity to the driver of the clumsy vehicle, who was seated on his box, with mouth ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... turned, and sidled away into the shrubbery, whence the tray presently rose into the air, flew across the laurel hedge, and descended with a peal of stage thunder on the stooped shoulders of Josephs. Miss Wilson, after asking the housekeeper with some asperity why she had allowed that man to interfere in the attendance, explained to the guests that he was the idiot of the countryside. Mr. Jansenius laughed, and said that he had not seen the man's face, but that his ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... related of the Ref. Pres. Church in Scotland, will apply substantially to that section of the same body in Ireland. On the doctrine of the magistrate's power circa sacra, however, there was a controversy of several years' continuance and managed with much asperity, in which Rev. Messrs. John Paul, D.D., and Thomas Houston were the most distinguished disputants. Their contendings issued in breach of organic fellowship in 1840. Indeed the sister-hood which had subsisted for many years among the Synods east and west of the Atlantic ocean, was violated ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... her peace, Emily, therefore, tried to persuade, when she could not convince, and sought by every gentle means to induce her to forbear that asperity of reply, which so greatly irritated Montoni. The pride of her aunt did sometimes soften to the soothing voice of Emily, and there even were moments, when she regarded ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... wonder that Americans have retorted with some asperity upon criticisms in which any approach to such insolent insularism is even remotely or ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... say," cut in Miss Doolittle with some asperity, "is that Mr. Thomas Faulkenstone Demilt is her brother." She did not add, as extreme candour would have urged, "And I have some hope—remote, alas! but there—of becoming sister ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... compared the gentleness of this Creole's rebukes with the asperity of his advocacy of right, and felt humiliated. But M. Grandissime spoke ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... dance whatever dances I like, as I have always done," said Marian, with some little asperity in ...
— Miss Sarah Jack, of Spanish Town, Jamaica • Anthony Trollope
... it strike her as strange that a taxi, with its flag up for hire, should be standing opposite the bank door, blocking the way for arriving vehicles; or that, having persistently refused many irate would-be hirers, and patiently listened to the asperity of their remarks, the driver should have opened the door and held it back as she walked straight across the pavement, got in, and, without hesitating gave the address of ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... Henry might have controlled his temper, when poor Edward was so near his end," said she with an asperity which disturbed slightly the roseate curves of ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... fling. He didn't put it so—a strict old Puritan of the old school—but that was Miss Graythorpe's gloss in her own mind on what he did say. However, her mother never did come round. She cherished her condemnation of her daughter to the end, forgiving her again more suo, if anything with increased asperity, on her death-bed. ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... naturally," he returned with involuntary asperity. It was incredible, yet it was a fact, that for the moment his immediate purpose in seeking to speak to her was lost under a rush of resentment at counting for so little in her fate. Of what stuff, then, was his ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... his habits. Associating constantly with fashionable folk his naturally dignified behavior was increased. He was an aristocrat- -there is no other word—and he did not care to be hail-fellow- well-met with the musicians. A certain primness and asperity did not make him popular. While teaching, his manner warmed, the earnest artist came to life, all halting of speech and polite insincerities were abandoned. His pupils adored him. Here at least the sentiment was one of ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... it but to submit to circumstances; and, with a feeling of no little asperity towards that "flirting Suffolk girl," Lady ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... the looks of that four-eyed teacher, anyway," declared the old lady, with some asperity. "I'm going to see about it. Your father would just let you be driven from pillar to post—he's got no spunk. What you Lockwoods need in this town is a woman ...
— The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna - or, The Crew That Won • Gertrude W. Morrison
... Brisac laid down the newspaper to pour forth compliments of condolence.—Mrs. Somers tore the piece of paper as he approached the table, and said, with some asperity, "One would think this was a matter of life and death, by the terms in ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... me, much about the same time, obtain an introduction to Dr. Samuel Johnson and to John Wilkes, Esq. Two men more different could not perhaps be selected out of all mankind. They had even attacked one another with some asperity in their writings; yet I lived in habits of friendship with both. I could fully relish the excellence of each; for I have ever delighted in that intellectual chemistry, which can separate good qualities from ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... property. The dinner too in its turn was highly admired; and he begged to know to which of his fair cousins the excellency of its cooking was owing. But he was set right there by Mrs. Bennet, who assured him with some asperity that they were very well able to keep a good cook, and that her daughters had nothing to do in the kitchen. He begged pardon for having displeased her. In a softened tone she declared herself not ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... remember those times, Esther," she returned with her old asperity. "They are changed now. Well! I am glad to see you, and glad you are not too proud to know me." But indeed she seemed disappointed ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... shall prevent its further overflow. I think much depends upon the manner, the inflection, and the tone of voice in which the desire is expressed, and I am sorry to say that upon the occasion to which I refer, there was more of the asperity of profanity than the calmness of constructive suggestion in my father's manner. In any event I did not blame him, for here was I coming along, undeniably imminent, a tempest raging, and no doctor in sight, and consequently no telling when my venerable ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... with a certain haste and carelessness, was carrying in her arms her third child, yet unweaned, and she expected a fourth in the early autumn. Clara had matured, she had grown stronger; and despite the asperity of her pretty, pale face there was a charm in the free gestures and the large body of the young and prolific mother. Albert Benbow wore the rough, clay-dusted attire of the small earthenware manufacturer who is away from the works for half an hour. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... exclaimed the horse-dealer; "I'm certain I counted right." "And so am I!" said the woman; "I can not be mistaken. It is you who have made the mistake. You always were a stupid old fool about money!" This she said with some degree of asperity, for she was evidently displeased at the whole proceeding. "A fool, eh? A fool!" muttered the old man; "you do well to call me a fool before strangers!" "Ja, that's the way! I always told you so!" screamed the woman, in rising tones of anger; "you'll lose ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... labeling his trophies, now. I picked up one a while ago, and found it marked "Fragment of a Russian General." I carried it out to get a better light upon it—it was nothing but a couple of teeth and part of the jaw-bone of a horse. I said with some asperity: ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... said, "are the work of a young newspaper artist who belongs here. A clever fellow. He has caught the expressions of these men wonderfully. His only failure, indeed, is that picture of myself." He regarded it with distaste, and a touch of asperity crept into his manner. "I don't know why the committee lets it stay there," he said, irritably. "It isn't a bit like." He recovered himself. "But all the others are excellent, excellent, though I believe many ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... whereof, and of the plan they are pursuing, I send you a letter of Mr. Paine to me, printed in this city and disseminated with great industry. Enclosed you will receive also a production of Peter Porcupine, alias William Cobbett. Making allowances for the asperity of an Englishman, for some of his strong and coarse expressions, and a want of official information as to many facts, it is not a bad thing." The "many facts" were, of course, the action of Monroe, and the supposed action of Morris in Paris, but not even ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... an arrangement, or want of arrangement, is obvious; and it must have caused much friction in the House. We can imagine the officer in charge of the finances resenting the intrusion of his brother of the library with an asperity not wholly in accordance with fraternal charity. And yet, so strong is the tendency of human nature to put up with whatever exists, rather than be at the trouble of changing it, no effectual steps in the way of remedy were taken until the fifteenth century. In that century, however, we find that ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... sake, Chet!" exclaimed Jess, with some asperity. "Do you suppose we are going to need you ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... empire. It is the old State religion which Augustine attacks, ridiculing the innumerable Roman godlings whose names he perhaps found in Varro. It is true that Plato, Euripides, and Xenophanes had attacked the official mythology with hardly less asperity; but they did not escape censure, and the Christian alienation from the Olympians was ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... with more asperity than he usually showed to Oriana. 'These are the notions you have learned from your white brother, and I desire not to hear them. Tisquantum knows his duty. I will demand the lives of the woman and child of whom you speak; but the warrior must abide ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... residence at New Caledonia. The result of their labours was, in consequence, very scanty, and, according to the younger F.'s assertions, received little or no encouragement from the friendly services of many of their fellow voyagers. He has inveighed with no small asperity against the ignorant selfishness and unprincipled hostility with which they had to contend. These seem to have been of a flagrant appearance, and almost systematic consistency. "If there had not been a few ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... moreover (an important and too often neglected factor in a mother's influence over her children), were finished and elegant, though intolerably stiff in some respects, when compared with the manners and habits of to-day. The maidens of today can scarcely realize, for instance, the asperity of the training of their embryo great-grandmothers, who were always made to sit in so Spartanly upright a posture that Mrs. Scott, in her seventy-ninth year, boasted that she had never allowed her shoulders to touch ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... than the Episcopalians. The war of pamphlets and newspapers was fiercely waged, and the election of bishops sometimes became a bitter party contest, with the unpleasant incidents of such competitions. In the midst of the controversy at home the publication of the Oxford Tracts added new asperity to it. A distressing episode of the controversy was the arraignment of no less than four of the twenty bishops on charges affecting their personal character. In the morbid condition of the body ecclesiastic every such hurt festered. The highest febrile ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... trust I never will," he replied, with a touch of asperity; "but I feel that Fred has shown very ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... But she soon saw that this would never do. A mistake on his part would be a blow to his reputation. Besides making enemies of people like the Henrys for nothing. If he had to lose them as patients, it might as well be for a good solid reason, she told herself with a dash of his own asperity. No, it was a case of either husband or friend. And though she pitied Agnes from the bottom of her heart, yet there were literally no lengths she would have shrunk from going to, to spare Richard pain or even anxiety. And this led her on to wonder ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... meaner one now." Mr. Wiggins made the assertion with asperity and looked at the same time directly at Octavius Buzzby. "I know all about their free dispensaries that'll draw trade away from my very counter and take the bread and butter out of my mouth; and as for the fees—there won't be a chance for recording a homestead site; there isn't ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... more upon their auditory than reasons Public weal requires that men should betray, and lie Ridiculous desire of riches when we have lost the use of them Rowers who so advance backward Season a denial with asperity, suspense, or favour So that I could have said no worse behind their backs Socrates: According to what a man can Studied, when young, for ostentation, now for diversion Swim in troubled waters without fishing in them Take a pleasure in being uninterested ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger
... would, Nathaniel," she returned, with a slight asperity. "But I should prefer it if you would leave ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... was peculiarly distinguished by loftiness of spirit; that of Dante by intensity of feeling. In every line of the Divine Comedy we discern the asperity which is produced by pride struggling with misery. There is perhaps no work in the world so deeply and uniformly sorrowful. The melancholy of Dante was no fantastic caprice. It was not, as far as at this distance of time can be judged, the effect of external ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... one of the malign chances of fortune that this letter never reached its destination, General Hampden did not learn of Oliver's death until some weeks later, when he heard of it by accident. It was a terrible blow to him, for time was softening the asperity of his temper, and he had just made up his mind to make friends with his son. He attributed the failure to inform him of Oliver's illness and death to the ...
— The Christmas Peace - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... a Cavalier." This book attempts to give a picture of the Parliamentary war; but in some places an unfair, and everywhere a most superficial account. I said so; and my uncle, who had an old craze in behalf of the book, opposed me with asperity; and, in the course of what he said, under some movement of ill-temper, he asked me, in a way which I felt to be taunting, how I could consent to waste my time as I did. Without any answering warmth, I explained that my guardians, having quarrelled with me, would ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... lying open unto the ocean and sharp winds, it must indeed be subject to more cold than further within the land, where the mountains are interposed as walls and bulwarks, to defend and to resist the asperity and rigour of the sea and weather. Some hold opinion that the Newfoundland might be the more subject to cold, by how much it lieth high and near unto the middle region. I grant that not in Newfoundland alone, ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes
... temper. His plans for the advancement of the colony were bold and judicious, his representations to the government of France fearless and effectual, his personal conduct and piety unimpeachable, but he exhibited a bitterness and asperity to those who did not enter into his views little suited to the better points of his character, and it is said that ambition and the love of authority at times overcame his ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... a startled look. Neenah looked intently into the unsteady, blue-grey eyes and then bent over to kiss the hand of the Princess. The latter laughed almost aloud in her confusion. She caught herself up quickly and said with some asperity: "You foolish child, I am to become a prince's wife. How can I love your sahib? What nonsense! I am to marry a prince and he is not to pay ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... subjects of the Sultan should be placed by Treaty under the guarantee of all the Great Powers. This project was opposed by Lord Stratford and the Turkish Ministers as an encroachment on the Sultan's sovereignty, and its rejection led the King to write with some asperity to his ambassador in London that he should seek the welfare of Prussia in absolute neutrality. [468] At a later period the King demanded from England, as the condition of any assistance from himself, a guarantee for the maintenance of the frontiers of Germany ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... refusal surprised Helen Rolleston; all the more that it was uttered with a certain sullenness, and even asperity, she had never seen till then ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... not be easy to fathom the reason for the employment of girls as ushers in the London theatres. Perhaps it is to heighten the glamour of a place whose glamour hardly needs heightening, or more probably it is to soften the asperity of the play-goer who finds himself asked sixpence for that necessary evil, the programme. But, now I come to think of it, most of the play-goers in London are Englishmen who have been always used to paying, ancestrally and personally, sixpence for their programmes ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... dull and vapid, if negligence were not sometimes roused, and sluggishness quickened, by due severity of reprehension. But acids unmixed will distort the face and torture the palate; and he that has no other qualities than penetration and asperity, he whose constant employment is detection and censure, who looks only to find faults, and speaks only to punish them, will soon be ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... that Mr. Gorham speaks for the Administration in this matter?" asked Senator Hunt, with some asperity. ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... which Remus and Romulus stood in respect to each other, and the feelings which were naturally awakened in their hearts by the circumstances in which they found themselves placed, were such as did not tend to allay any rising asperity which accident might occasion, but rather to irritate and inflame it. In the first place, they were both ardent, impulsive, and imperious. Each was conscious of his strength, and eager to exercise it. Each wished to command, and was wholly ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... a year older than Joe," Mrs. Newbolt corrected him, with some asperity, "and she's one of the kind that'll keep. Well, I was married myself, and had a baby, when I was nineteen. But that's ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... the Green Dragon, he would have noticed that the landlady, its presiding genius, was stiffer than usual; the rosy smile was more constrained, as if a great host had to be embraced, and were trying it to the utmost stretch. There was, however, no asperity about her, and when she had led him to the door he was to enter to prefer his suit, and she had asked whether the young woman was quite common, and he had replied that he had picked her up on the road, and that she was certainly poor, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Rosecrans succeeding him. The army as a whole did not manifest much regret at the change of commanders, for the campaign from Louisville on was looked upon generally as a lamentable failure, yet there were many who still had the utmost confidence in General Buell, and they repelled with some asperity the reflections cast upon him by his critics. These admirers held him blameless throughout for the blunders of the campaign, but the greater number laid every error at his door, and even went to the absurdity of challenging his loyalty in a mild ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan
... long, slender legs when in motion seemed so fragile that it was startling to witness the temerity with which he kicked up his frolicsome heels. The dogs, with that odd canine affectation of having just perceived the intruders, pursued them with sudden asperity, barking and snapping, and at last came trotting nimbly home, wagging their tails and ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... garden of the monastery of St. Dominic, mildly observed, "It is certain, my lord, for I have seen it of excellent quality in that island, and I may even say, look at it yourself, for I have some with me." The Bishop lost his temper and answered with great asperity: "What do you know? This is like the affairs you manage! What do you know about the ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... demands the fair Bella, with just a soupcon of asperity in her tone,—as much as she ever allows herself when in the society of men. She makes up for this abstinence by bestowing a liberal share of it upon her ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... would be ready to go off by the Tremolino, or in any other way, in order to join the royal headquarters. Did he intend, she asked ironically, to wait for the very eve of the entry into Madrid? Thus by a judicious exercise of tact and asperity we re-established the atmospheric equilibrium of the room long before I left them a little before midnight, now tenderly reconciled, to walk down to the harbour and hail the Tremolino by the usual soft whistle from the edge ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... father and son would now leave off rubbing against each other; since no unprejudiced person could doubt of the strong affection of the father, nor of the warm gratitude of the son. In spite of the asperity with which James spoke of the Earl, she was beginning to like him almost as much as she esteemed him. This had not been the case in their childhood, when he used to be praised by the elders for his obedience to his grandmother and his ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said of VAUCANSON, that he was as much an automaton as any which he made. HOGARTH and SWIFT, who looked on the circles of society with eyes of inspiration, were absent in company; but their grossness and asperity did not prevent the one from being the greatest of comic painters, nor the other as much a creator of manners in his way. Genius, even in society, is pursuing its own operations, and it would cease to be itself were it always to ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... temporarily august and superior, managed to say the wrong thing and in doing so put myself in a position from which I could not recede without loss of dignity. If my memory serves me correctly I remarked, with some asperity, that marriages of that kind never turned out well for any ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... follow Comrag's tracks," she said, pointing toward the spot where the hoof-prints emerged from the brush. "You'd better leave your rifle here," she added with some asperity, "You might take a fancy to shoot Comrag if he strayed ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... to dae wi' yer leave,' his father was beginning, with a wink, when his mother, with something of her old asperity, said: ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... remark, as a curious physical instance of the efficacy of a sudden surprise in counteracting the effects of extreme fear, that her voice had quite recovered all its official asperity. ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
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